Healing childhood trauma Pt1o

Reframing The Past

In this last section of the healing from childhood trauma series, today’s blog, along with the next two weeks, deals with the last stages of healing. We come to this after significant work had been done understanding, then making changes, interrupting old patterns of thinking and behavior. Support systems are in place. Significant spiritual and trauma body work have been done. It is then that we can find a healthy connection with the past instead of a broken one. It is then we can embark on a new life instead of constantly struggling to survive the old one. 

This is not to say I’ve reached a place where I live as if nothing ever happened to me. That’s not realistic. I will always be impacted by the suffering of my childhood, but now it no longer writes the script of my present or future. 

Finding A Healthy Connection With The Past

What do I mean by looking at childhood trauma with a healthy connection? As opposed to what? As opposed to living in flashback. Seeing everyone in the world as out to get me. Believing that life is too hard to live. Thinking that my parents still have power and control over me especially in my thoughts which means they are still making choices for me. Heartfelt belief that my parents were right. I am trash. I am stupid. I do not have what it takes to live life. Believing that the world is a dangerous place. Believing that something terrible is going to happen to me, especially if I break free from my abusers. Believing that I am crazy.

Do you see the belief structure that keeps trauma in place? When I live like that, it is just as if I am still living in my childhood home. That I have no autonomy and no choice to have a real life. The life I want. That no time has passed at all. I have given all my power over to people who are going to use that power to destroy me—and they will do it as long as long as I live—if I let them.

Having a healthy connection with the past means I can remember the good things and even find joy in them. I understand that the dark clouds my parents lived under were because of their own trauma and the choices they made with their own lives. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. I have good connections with the beautiful state of Virginia and the many wondrous things it gave me. I live in a totally different way and in a totally different place now, but that doesn’t take away from my memories of my home state. I have chosen to continue friendships with healthy people from my past who are supportive. The ones who don’t get it don’t matter. I never see them. 

As most survivors will attest, everything from childhood is not all bad all the time. Sorting through the good becomes easier over time. I have a particularly happy memory I would like to share with you.

Standing in my parents bedroom, my nose barely reaching over the top of the dresser, I smelled the unique scent of my mother’s perfumed powder, vanilla and gardenia. Little plops of white spilled around the fancy plastic top. I touched a bit with the end of my finger and put it to my nose. I thought it smelled so good. Next to the powder sat a beautiful jewelry box. I thought it the most beautiful thing in all the world. Carved from solid stone, it had romantic themes; women with flowing hair, flying little cupids and handsome men. With a sky blue background, all the raised figures were carved like a cameo in white. 

I had been with my father when he bought it for my mother. Chosen with care, I remember how much he liked it and how expensive it was. We were on a trip to Lurray, Caverns, Virginia. My childhood was filled with mysterious trips to kitschy Americana, and Lurray was one of my favorites. My parents were still young and my father still under the impression he could make my mother happy. As usual with anything lovely and personal, my mother received the gift with barely a grunt and a shrug. She did place it on the dresser, but I never once saw her open it or place anything inside. It was her silent message of rejection. Not so much of the box but of my father. That was always how she received a gift.

I used to stand in front of her tall dresser and stare at the beautiful blue box. I told myself my parents loved each other and that I was loved and had a place in the world. None of that was true, but the jewelry box represented the dreams and wishes of a child’s heart. 

Decades later when my mother was institutionalized, we had to clean out her house. I kept the blue jewelry box. Placing it in an honored spot on my own dresser, I filled it with all sorts of treasure opening it every single day, enjoying it with every single use. I had the box for about three years when my sister-in-law, who was still in contact with my mother, told me my mother was asking for the box. How strange. Besides never caring much about it in the past, she had been nearly catatonic for years. How did she even remember it?

I gladly handed it over. It was my mother’s. If she had a memory of it and wanted it, I didn’t want to keep it. About six months later, I saw my sister-in-law again. She held up a card board box filled with tissue paper. “I’m so sorry about all of this,” she said. “I don’t know why your mother insisted on the jewelry box. I took it to her and all she said was, ’Why did you bring that old thing here? Throw that thing in the trash.’ I know how much you loved it so I brought it back to you.”

For awhile I put the blue box on the floor under my dresser. It made me sad to look at it but I knew where it was. The sad memory faded with time, and the happy memory surfaced. I put it back in its place of honor. 

For me, the box represents the memory of the sweet little girl I was. The child who wanted so much to connect with a woman who did not have the capacity to connect. Keeping the box was a way to cherish myself. My mother could not give me “the blessing,” so I would give it to myself by keeping something she should have been glad to give me.

Each of us is different and in different places along our journey. My brother hated anything associated with our parents and most especially anything associated with our childhood home. For him, things like the box were tainted and only brought pain and flashbacks. For some, the best thing would have been to take a sledge hammer to a box like that, for others it would have been to put it in the trash. For me, it was to keep it and give it a new life, just like I had given myself. 

Reframing a healthy connection with the past, will be unique to you. How would you like to have a healthy connection with the past? How have you done it? I would love to hear all your ideas. Send them to hello@defytraumaembracejoy.com

As we move into summer, embrace joy every chance you get. When you do that you ARE defying trauma!